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The International Space Station - Early Visions Of A Space Station, The American Skylab, Soviet And Russian Space Stations, An International Effort

I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade.

—President Ronald Reagan, January 25, 1984

A space station is an orbiting structure designed to accommodate visiting crewmembers for an extended period of time. In 1984 the U.S. government envisioned building a continuously manned space station in which scientists would conduct long-term research in a micro-gravity environment. The station was to be large and spacious, with room for up to ten crewmembers at a time. The U.S. space shuttle was going to be the workhorse that carried cargo and astronauts to the station and back on a routine basis.

To save money on this expensive undertaking, the U.S. invited other countries to participate. Eventually fifteen countries did so, including Russia, which assumed a major role in the project. The space station became an international venture. It also became very expensive. The design was changed again and again to bring costs down. The development phase dragged on for more than a decade. In 1998 construction finally began on the International Space Station (ISS).

After five years a small portion of the ISS was in orbit around Earth. Then the space shuttle Columbia exploded. The entire shuttle fleet was grounded while NASA tried to figure out what went wrong. ISS construction came to a grinding halt, because only shuttles are powerful enough to haul heavy pieces of the ISS into space. This was a serious setback for the project.

In January 2004 U.S. President George Bush set forth a new space agenda for the United States—sending astronauts to the moon and Mars. The plan calls for aborting the shuttle program and ceasing ISS construction as soon as possible. That would mean a space station much smaller than expected, with limited research capabilities. This disappoints many scientists around the world. However, others believe that even a downsized ISS is a major step on humanity's journey into outer space.

Additional Topics

The International Space Station - Early Visions Of A Space Station

The first serious proposal for a space station was made in 1923 by the scientist Hermann Oberth (1894–1989). Although born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived and worked in Germany. Oberth is considered one of the fathers of rocket science. His doctoral dissertation was titled Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). Oberth proposed building an orbiting s…

The International Space Station - The American Skylab

Long before an Apollo spacecraft landed on the moon, NASA planners were looking ahead to their next great project. The Apollo Applications Program (AAP) began in 1963 with a plan to use leftover Apollo hardware in some kind of orbiting station including a laboratory, workshop, and space telescope. When the Apollo 20 mission was cancelled in 1970, the AAP inherited a Saturn V rocket. They used the …

The International Space Station - Soviet And Russian Space Stations

When the Soviets realized that they could not beat the Americans to the moon during the 1960s, they turned their attention to other space goals. In 1971 they put the first of many Soviet space stations into orbit around Earth. Soviet and Russian cosmonauts spent the next three decades gaining valuable experience in long-duration space flight. On April 19, 1971, the Soviet space station called Sal…

The International Space Station - An International Effort

In his 1984 State of the Union speech, U.S. President Ronald Reagan directed NASA to develop a space station before the end of the decade. The project was expected to cost the U.S. only around $8 billion due to the participation of foreign governments. By 1988 Canada, Japan, and nine European countries had signed formal agreements with the United States to participate in the project. Reagan chose …

The International Space Station - The Cost Of Waiting

In mid-2003 the U.S. Congress asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to assess the effects of shuttle launch delays on the ISS. The GAO is an investigatory agency of the Congress. In September 2003 the GAO released a report titled Space Station: Impact of the Grounding of the Shuttle Fleet. The GAO report noted that the delay caused a number of operational problems. Before the Columbia disaster…

The International Space Station - Iss Science

The ISS was intended to be a world-class laboratory for conducting experiments under microgravity conditions. Three broad areas of research are conducted aboard the station: life sciences, biomedicine, and materials processing. The chief goal of life sciences and biomedicine research is to determine the effects on humans of long-duration space travel. One of the difficulties of performing typical …

The International Space Station - Iss Crew Training

The ISS Expedition crews undergo extensive training at facilities around the world. Figure 5.6 shows the locations of these training facilities, including: Expedition crewmembers undergo approximately eighteen months of rigorous training. Training time is divided up among various tasks. The single task receiving the most time is extravehicular activity (EVA) or space-walking. ISS assembly requires…

Robotic Missions in Sun-Earth Space - Nasa's Science Goals, Nasa's Explorer Program, Nasa's Discovery Program [next] [back] The Space Shuttle Program - The Post-apollo Vision, Space Shuttle Design And Development, Space Shuttle Flight Profile, Space Shuttle Program Organization

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